Posted on 12 April, 2013
Following their recent review of the Boston Viridis, Anandtech have had their hands on HP’s new Moonshot ‘Microserver’ system based on Intel’s Centerton Atom CPUs and have drawn some interesting comparisons against the Calxeda architecture used in Viridis:
It is simple: even at 2 GHz, the Atom S1260 is no match for Calxeda’s EnergyCore at 1.4 GHz. The EnergyCore is the better server chip thanks to out of order execution, a 4 times larger L2-cache (4 MB) and the fact that it can offer 4 real cores. Even if we assume that the 2 GHz Atom S1260 performs 8% better thanks to its higher clockspeed, it is no match for Calxeda’s EnergyCore.
So let us summarize. The current A9 based Calxeda EC 1.4 GHz is about 40% faster and consumes half the power of the Atom S1260. Therefore it is not unreasonable to assume that the performance per Watt ratio of the Calxeda SoC will be up to 3 times better.
That, coupled with the form factor and “cartridge” design implemented by HP, did little to impress:
Let us cut to the chase: the current Atom has pretty bad performance/watt ratio. And the way the HP server cartridges are built today does not make it better. Compare the mini-blade approach with the EnergyCard approach of Calxeda or the “credit card servers” of SeaMicro and you’ll understand that there are better and more innovative ways to design micro servers.
To find out more, head on over to AnandTech and read the full review.